Is not the rinding up witnesses,[1]
And nicking, more than half the bus'ness?360
Por Matnesses, like watches, go
Just as they're set, too fast or slow;
And where in conscience they're strait-lac'd,
'Tis ten to one that side is cast.
Do not your juries give their verdict365
As if they felt the cause, not heard it?
And as they please make matter o' fact
Run all on one side as they're packt?
Nature has made man's breast no windores,
To publish what he does within-doors;370
Nor what dark secrets there inhabit,
Unless his own rash folly blab it.
If oaths can do a man no good
In his own bus'ness, why they shou'd
In other matters do him hurt,375
I think there's little reason for't.
He that imposes an oath makes it,[2]
Not he that for convenience takes it:
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made?380
These reasons may perhaps look oddly
To th' wicked, tho' they evince the godly;
But if they will not serve to clear
My honour, I am ne'er the near.
Honour is like that glassy bubble,385
That finds philosophers such trouble;
Whose least part crack'd, the whole does fly,
And wits are crack'd to find out why.[3]
- ↑ These lines, thanks to the "vitality" of English law, are as severely satirical now as they were two hundred years ago.
- ↑ This and the following are two of the best remembered and oftenest quoted lines of Hudibras. Sec line 275, above, where the same thought is expressed.
- ↑ This glassy bubble is the well-known Prince Rupert's drop, so called because the prince first introduced the knowledge of it to this country. It is of common glass, in size and shape like the accompanying figure; and
answer, saith the Lawyer, without knowing what you can swear? Pox on your scruples, says the client again, pray do your part of a lawyer and draw me a sufficient answer; and let me alone to do the part of a gentleman, and swear it."
